I think the biggest innovation of the Pistonrobot is the sensory system in the robot that allows the robot to sense, transmit, and record the extent of the retraction and extension of the pistons of the Pistonrobot.

I feel that a reliable, simple, accurate, and easily understandable method to “sense” the extent of retraction-extension of a piston is just essential in order for pistons to be feasible as a method to provide motive power to a robot. I decided to describe this new sensory system via a set of 5 minute videos that piece-by-piece put together how this sensory capability will be created.

Well…. a New Year is here (2019) so I thought to add a brief note of what I’ve been up to. In October, 2018, I thought I would take a few months off from the robot to work on a Flying Machine. I think The Flying Machine is interesting to consider. This particular Flying Machine is designed around a heavy lift function. My design interest is to create a Flying Machine that has enough lift to be able to carry a person or a payload that weighs about as much as a human being or even a little bit more than that. Perhaps a payload in the range of about 300 lbs. When I looked at my design for this Flying Machine, I thought is was just fun to look at and that the design is a cool idea for a toy for the Holiday Season. Hahahaha… nothing ever gets designed in the amount of time one thinks might be needed. Anyway, it never made it to the finished toy stage by the time the 2018 Holidays were here. I’m still working on it.

I also took a year off to create arms for the pistonrobot. Its interesting, an autonomous robot needs to have very central to its creation an ability to get itself back to standing balanced and upright in the bipedal pose after it falls down. Because, particularly as the robot is developed, it’s gonna’ fall down a lot! Anyway, I realized that arms are so important in the process of giving protection to the robot to try to prevent damage as it is falling over, and also to help the robot to go through the motions and actions that allow it to get itself from “down on the ground” back to “standing up.” So I gave it arms and they have a significant range of motion in all axes as will be needed and they are robust and have a lot of potential force that they can exert. All of this is needed, it is weird to me that this topic of stance recovery is not really featured much in autonomous robot discussions. Anyway, I got one of the “New” pistonrobots and sent him outside to pose in front of the trees to show us all his new arms, and I asked him to give us a wave, and I even got a little smile. I thought the image was cool, so here it is. More to come.

Of interest, I discovered that (at least to me) as I created images of the Pistonrobot really just for the purpose of helping to show whatever feature of the Pistonrobot that I was describing at the time, that, well…..it was a surprise to me, some of the images are just pretty to look at. So I have parts of the website that are mostly present to display the Pistonrobot images and set the website up so people can download these images.

I found that I could make sets of 3D drawings where I incrementally alter the position of the Pistonrobot, make renders from these 3D drawing files, and then “string” these rendered images together to make videos that, again, as a great surprise to me, have the appearance of videos of the Pistonrobot moving around, and there is not even a physically real version of the Pistonrobot! I am just fascinated by that and I give some space on the website where I discuss how these videos were created.

I also discuss other topics of interest to me at this website and these topics really don’t have much to do with the Pistonrobot or robotics, but they are topics that I think are interesting. These topics are arranged in their own section.

I sometimes create images via Sketchup and/or via renderings of Sketchup outputs. These images are scattered around the website. I will also from time to time put a few of these images here on the home page, mostly because I feel they are just cool to look at. Some are related to the Pistonrobot and some are about other topics.

I feel the images are always better to view in their large format. I create them as large size images, but one cannot just place large filesize images on a website because websites will bog down and frequently stop functioning as they try to open images bigger than about 3 mb. These images are created by rendering Sketchup 2018 Pro drawing files. I use KeyShot v7 to render these drawing files. I think there is interest in people working with their own version of KeyShot to see how they can create Pistonrobot images. KeyShot can do its rendering by using a KeyShot package file. I offer some of my KeyShot package files for free download

I finally figured out a way around the problem of how one could offer people large file size images so they could download them and then look at them. I discuss this in more detail including some large filesize images free for download on this page of the website: Pistonrobot webpage about large file size images

Now that I’ve figured out how I can offer large file size images for download, I hope to just keep adding more. My plan is to add them at that page I showed above. Enjoy !

Here’s one of those larger images that you can download (note I’m showing here the 3mb version so it won’t bog down your viewing of this page, the large size version of this image is 31mb).

Here’s the KeyShot package file you can use to see how I did this in KeyShot (of note, you will need KeyShot to open this package file (and I think you may be required to use the educational version of KeyShot, I am not sure on this point).

Once you get to the 3D Warehouse, in order for you to see my SketchUp drawings at the Warehouse, you will need to ask the Warehouse to search for my collection. The name of my collection at the 3D Warehouse is: pistonrobot

I wanted to show how the fuel injectors would heat up the air in the combustion chamber. So I just worked around to see if I could make anything that looks like 3D flames. Anyway, this is the engine that I am designing to be the power supply of the robot. I plan a YouTube lecture on it, the video name will be: Pistonrobot the Engine of the Heart

But I’m not quite ready to start creating the video, I thought the flames were cool, so I sent them up to the warehouse

and (as usual) this is a 3D drawing that has a lot more to show if you will download it from the Trimble 3D Warehouse site and open it on your own computer.

Engine and Bigger Thorax Robot v11

Sigh,

as it happens, the Little Guy needed to “bulk up” some in order to get that engine in his chest. Isn’t that always the case…..

I thought he looked pretty much OK with the big chest, if Pistonrobot is ever actually created, it will probably be the military that does it anyway…..

and they all look like that.

Amazon’s gonna’ let me sell Pistonrobot T’s via their merchandise site. I’ll see if I can get the Big Guy on a T. I don’t know yet, this stuff gets complicated really fast. More to come.

Welcome to all. We will describe on this site a bipedal walking robot and show the design and programming elements needed so that this walking robot could actually be constructed and can be made to walk. It’s gonna’ be fun, you just watch. The purpose of this site is to make it clear that such a robot could be built and that it will function just as it is described. We note that as of yet, the robot does not exist. Some of the important design features of the robot derive from the specifications listed above. We will have the robot to exist in a physical form that is very similar to the human. Since this robot will be a demonstrator that a robot can be created that exhibits the same type of balanced, graceful, fluid, and energy efficient motion as does a human, then we want to quickly stop the assertion that such a structure cannot be made and will not work. Shaping a robot so that it has a human form is ideal to meet this requirement for fundamental feasibility because one can contemplate the human form anytime one wants to, and one can see its form and motion. It makes no sense to look at the human in motion, and then assert that such a physical shape and form of motion is not possible. Of course it is possible, there it is right in front of you.